Is there some use for Japanese outside of weeb shit? I do intend on traveling to Japan but never living there. I simply love the sound of the language, but I am practical at the end of the day.
considering learning Japanese
Is there some use for Japanese outside of weeb shit? I do intend on traveling to Japan but never living there. I simply love the sound of the language, but I am practical at the end of the day.
i just started learning it on duolingo a few weeks ago. it's pretty neato. no fucking clue why i chose japanese, just wanted a challenge.
nice people but a stagnant dying nation, not the same since the 90s bubble burst
Ask yourself; "When was the last time I saw or heard anything in Japanese outside of anime" and you'll have answered your own question. Its largely a waste of time. Everyone in Japan is a mandated ESL anyways
>just want to be a tourist
>don't actually like their culture
no good reason to bother then
also, as a tourist, you don't belong on this website
is kind of misleading, it's true that there's mandated English in schools but people will put up shockingly bad grammar on official signage, and plenty of people can't speak it at all. It's like mandatory Spanish in (much of) the US.
>It's like mandatory Spanish in (much of) the US.
Spanish is not mandatory in the US, its exploratory, meaning while most high schools have a Spanish class, its just one of many exploratory subjects students can take, and most students don't. Its nothing like in Japan. In Japan English is mandatory, even if most students largely forget how to speak it after they leave school
Spanish might as well be mandatory in the future; it's gaining traction as a language in the US. You are right now, it's not mandated.
>its gaining traction
I wouldn't say its "gaining traction" more like its always been widely spoken in the American Southwest, since, you know, it used to be part of Mexico and all that. Many place names in the Southwestern US will even retain their old Spanish place names. You tend to just pick up on some of it naturally.
Spanish was mandatory in my school district at the elementary and middle school levels. And that was all the way up in Massachusetts, although we did have the option to switch to French and German in high school for our language requirement.
I assumed other states with more Hispanics pushed it even harder, but maybe this is another case of Massachusetts having high education standards.
The Japanese "learn" English in school, yes, but actual fluency rates are nonexistent. You won't have an actual conversation in English with 99% of the Japanese population. At best they know a couple words. It's even worse than Americans who "learned" Spanish in school but only remember how to count to 10 and a few colors.
Japanese understand English perfectly, but only if you speak in katakana English.
You can ask them something as simple as "where is the store" and they won't understand it, but if you say "wheru isu za sutoru" they will understand perfectly.
This sounds like I'm making it up but it's true.
Even if you do that, they'll only understand select words. Mostly loanwords they already use. They're not going to understand complete sentences. You could say "toire" and they'll know you need to take a shit but that's because they already say that. And you have to learn their pronunciation anyway, which you won't get unless you learn some of the language. But yes, you're right, it's better to say it in engrish if you're going to try to communicate.
You need to brush up on your English.
You meant to say "I am pragmatic."
Expected a comment like this, thanks. There is no practical use for Japanese in the United States. Imagine being this much of a homo to correct grammar to a stranger.
That expectation didn't keep you from seething, "pragmatist."
I don't know why you post this on LULZ, anyway
> I simply love the sound of the language, but I am practical at the end of the day.
I don't think that's enough. You need incredible amounts of motivation and discipline or be autistic. Japanese isn't something you do "by the way" or you will not get anywhere
Language is a humanities, but I won't post it here again next time then.
I think /int/ or /jp/ would be better. They also have regular japanese language threads
Well if you want to be a scholar of Japanese history it's probably useful
There's a lot of Japanese literature that hasn't been translated
I remember there was some famous translator of Japanese who stated that it probably wasn't worth learning Japanese and that you should instead spend the required time learning French, Italian, Spanish, German and Russian
Japanese is one of the hardest languages to learn because it's very distant from IE languages, not related to any other language, and you have to learn kanji chinkrune homosexualry as well as 2 retarded kana alphabets. You could learn 2 or 3 other IE languages in the time it takes to learn Japanese, and it won't even speed up your progress in other languages like how learning Spanish will help you with Italian or Portuguese. Only thing it'll help with is literacy in Chinese since you already know the chinkrunes, but they're pronounced completely differently so even that makes a miniscule difference.
a little cross over to Cantonese, and maybe in Vietnam and also SKorea you might also find some of the 'Kanji'